If you're an independent film lover, than big name online movie sites like Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand and Hulu Plus probably don't do it for you. They're full of blockbuster hits, mainstream movies and TV shows.

If, however, you're into cult classics, film noir, international hits and more, Fandor, the "online service for indie film fans," is for you.

Just going onto the site and looking at the selection of categories, you can immediately see that this isn't going to be your standard, mainstream drivel. As the company notes in its release, "You know you're not in Hollywood anymore when you click on 'Seafaring & Swashbucklers', 'Anarchic Comedy' or 'Dysfunctional Families.'"

"Indie film fans simply don't care about the same things as traditional movie-goers," said Chris Kelly, a social technology evangelist who sits on Fandor's board of directors. "Indie fans want to be enriched or moved by the film, which is a personal thing that's hard to predict based on past viewing habits or a Q&A. They are highly suspect of being marketed to, invest heavily in discovering new things, but depend very much on personal recommendations for taste making. It's a natural fit for social."

The service has been in beta for several months but is launching to the public today. Users can sign up for a free month trial. From there, the service is $9.99 a month and is available on both the Web and on Boxee.

Despite some of the limitations of the iPhone camera, Park said that the device worked well for the filmmaking. The main difference, he said, was the size and portability of the "camera." Park told The Guardian that "the new technology creates strange effects because it is new and because it is a medium the audience is used to."

The film was made in conjunction with Park's younger brother, Park Chan-kyong and KT Corp, South Korea's exclusive iPhone distributor. KT paid for a portion of the film's $130,000 production costs.

Park won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 with "Oldboy" and the Jury Prize in 2009 for "Thirst."

Those who doubt that the iPhone 4 can be a suitable film camera should remember some of the controversy and concern surrounding the move to digital filmmaking - and away from "film" - in the first place. (Of course, some of that concern came from the fact that one of the first high-profile movies to go digital was Star Wars Episode II, but I daresay cinematography wasn't the problem there.)

Well, it's true - kind of. Amazon is indeed getting into the movie-making business with the launch of a new portal called Amazon Studios, but it's not a traditional studio by any means.

Crowdsourced Movie Production

The Amazon Studios portal provides tools that allow anyone to upload their content, be it a script or a full-length movie called a "test movie." These "test movies" have to be more than 70 minutes, but don't have to be "full budget," explains the company.

Once online, other Amazon members can read the scripts, watch the movies and even edit the content, by uploading their own alternate or revised versions. Members can also provide general feedback on the items uploaded to the site.

Amazon Studios will also award cash prizes in regular contests to those with the best scripts or movies. The first contest, underway now, is offering $100,000 for the best movie and two $20,000 awards for the best script. (Details here). In 2011, Amazon will dole out $1.1 million in awards, with $1,000,000 for the best movie and $100,000 for the best script. (Details here).

Winners are selected by a judging committee, an unknown group of "experts" and company execs, who will determine which items are worthy of Warner Bros.' attention.

Warner Bros., as the only Hollywood studio partnered with Amazon, has a "first look" deal with the new site, meaning Amazon Studio winners will be considered for future theatrical feature films. In addition to the cash rewards, winners actually get to meet with Warner Bros. development executives.

Said Roy Price, director of digital product development for Amazon, the company hopes that the new site will help filmmakers experiment and collaborate with each other. Filmmakers can make movies with the scripts posted online, for example, while screenwriters can upload scripts to get their movies made.

Internet Community & Movie-Making: Sometimes You Get "Snakes on a Plane"

The goal of the project is to "democratize" the process of breaking into Hollywood - and for that, we (and anyone who's seen some of the drivel that keeps getting produced there) are grateful. That being said, the Internet community doesn't always have the best judgement when it comes to what makes a great movie. Let's not forget the "Snakes on a Plane" debacle of 2006. Probably one of the first cases of crowdsourcing movie production to fans, filmmakers even reshot parts of the movie in response to fan feedback: they added more snakes, more gore, more death scenes and even the now infamous line, " I want these mother..... snakes off the mother.... plane!"

Of course, the movie bombed. It made just $1 million more than its production budget alone. What works online doesn't always translate to the big screen, you see.

Granted, in that case, there wasn't a "test movie" involved, like the kind Amazon is proposing - fans at the time were reacting to what they knew of the film's plot. Seeing a low-budget version of the film online may have changed things - it's hard to say. After all, the Internet community has an odd sense of humor at times.

As for whether the new Studios project is an oddball offering for Amazon, a site primarily thought of as a shopping portal, it's not, really. For one thing, the end product Amazon is funding will end up as inventory on its virtual shelves. Amazon also has a history of "democratizing" access through Internet technology. Its cloud computing infrastructure delivers the power of large server farms to even the smallest business or individual and its lesser-known, but fairly popular, on-demand, scalable workforce at Mechanical Turk crowdsources large jobs by splitting them up into smaller tasks performed by anyone with an Internet connection and a bit of time to kill online.

Amazon Studios fits in nicely with those types of democratizing, crowdsourced ventures. Whether or not it will lead to the next major blockbuster, however, is yet to be seen.

This behavior follows a trend we've noted in traditional media outlets. First, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said no more freebies for search engines, then the New York Times hinted (and today confirmed) that users would have to start paying for a certain amount of access to articles. Now, YouTube is partnering with the Sundance Film Festival and filmmakers to charge users around $5 to view a range of movies from the 2009 and 2010 festivals. It's still cheaper than a movie ticket - but is this a direction users will follow?

The films include The Cove, an underwater adventure about dolphin capturing in Japan; Bass Ackwards, which chronicles an improvised road trip; Children of Invention, about two Bostonian orphans; One Too Many Mornings, a "coming of age comedy about two guys who are too old to be coming of age"; and Homewrecker, a comedy about a locksmith. The filmmakers will determine the exact asking price for viewing each movie, but all will be in the range of $5.

YouTube execs told USA Today the move is helping independent filmmakers find distribution avenues for their films. The movies will be shown without ads, which would be an aesthetic disaster for any director who chose to put his creation online.

What do you think: Would you pay $5 to watch an indie flick on YouTube? What other revenue models should YouTube be considering? Let us know in the comments.

For more on paid content, including movies, see today's Open Thread: There's No Such Thing As Free Content.

See also: YouTube starts experimenting with Flash-free HTML video player and YouTube rolls out nicer new video player and a cleaner viewing page.

Not only does the film embrace the mobile as the core piece of its release pattern - a pattern which also includes simultaneous launches on DVD and the web - it embraces the mobile platform as a way to tell the story, too. Instead of offering up a large video download, Rage was released in seven parts throughout the week through the streaming media application, Babelgum, which has now climbed to #16 on the list of top free Entertainment-based iPhone apps.

The film's style is also well suited to the mobile with a minimalist look and feel where the story is told through exclusively through close-up interviews of fourteen people who witnessed an event at a New York fashion show. There are no nuanced details or special effects here - it's a perfect fit for a mobile audience who often half-watches videos while killing time or driving to work.

According to filmmaker Potter, this experimental distribution for her new movie is actually an attempt to fight the digital piracy problem faced by the movie industry today. And yes, she's doing it by by offering up her film for free...albeit in a way that ensures the film can only be viewed, not recorded. However, after watching the iPhone release, those interested in owning the movie can immediately purchase a DVD which includes 21 unused scenes by way of the film's online site for $24.95. That, too, represents, a major change to the usual release pattern for films. Typically, the movie-DVD release window involves several months of waiting where the only way to watch the movie is through illegal means such as using the peer-to-peer technology known as BitTorrent. 

Will this rethinking of movie distribution pay off? It's too soon to tell, but industry insiders are watching with deep curiosity. Jim Shomos, an Australian writer-producer known for mobile video series, for example, thinks using the mobile platform is a more direct way of getting the film to the target market - that is, people under 35.

Others are more skeptical. After all, does anyone really want to watch a full-length film on their mobile phone? Oh that's right, they do. Apple's iTunes store is proof of that. Now if we could only get studios to release really good films this way...

Recent news from crimson hexagon, makers of an online conversation-monitoring platform called VoxTrot, reveals that the word of mouth circulating on Twitter over the weekend about "Inglorious Basterds" was largely positive. In fact, only 8% of the 4500 sampled tweets had anything negative to say about the movie. Not surprisingly, the movie ended up doing extremely well at the box office, pulling in $37.6 million in the U.S., with an additional $27.1 million overseas, during its opening weekend.

But was Twitter really the impetus behind the movie's success? According to Matt Atchity, editor in chief of News Corp.-owned review site Rotten Tomatoes, the answer is "no." He thinks Twitter's influence is overhyped and overrated. In a recent Forbes interview, Atchity is quoted as saying:

"It's an interesting word of mouth, but I think only for a certain part of the audience. For the younger, more connected audience that may be true but for older audiences, I don't know...Do I think Twitter is affecting my cousins in Kansas City and what they see? If it's a big enough movie, they are going to see it."

Tweets Don't Equal Ticket Sales

He may have a point. Despite the reports and charts attempting to prove the "Twitter Effect," what's being said on Twitter may not have as big an impact on real-world actions as is being implied by these numbers. For one thing, we know that the demographics on Twitter aren't representative of the demographics of the movie-goers. (Teens don't tweet, remember?) Plus, correlating the volume of tweets about a movie, as research service Trendrr recently did, only proves people are talking, not what they're saying nor whether their anticipatory tweets will lead to actual ticket sales. Besides, don't we all know by now that correlation is not the same as causation?

Online Buzz Doesn't Always Deliver

Finally, online chatter, even when positive, can't save a movie (or a TV show for that matter, as "Firefly" fans will be sure to remind you.) Case in point: 2006's "Snakes on a Plane." In what was one of the first cases of crowdsourcing movie production to fans, the filmmakers eventually reshot parts of the movie to meet fan expectations. They added in more snakes, more gore, and more death scenes, thus bumping the rating of the movie from PG-13 to R. And, of course, they added in the now-famous line "I want these mother####ing snakes off the mother####ing plane!"

Based on the online chatter and excitement surrounding the film, everyone was sure it would be a success. Interest in the film went viral, with fan-made trailers and scripts, lit-up message boards, and general frenzy. What happened at the box office? Did "Snakes" become a smashing success? No, quite the opposite. The movie managed to rake in only $15 million on its opening weekend and, in the end, grossed $34 million domestically - only $1 million more than the production budget alone. In other words, it bombed.

What this means for Twitter is that the online chatter taking place on the popular microblogging site, while still an important vector for studying sentiment, is not powerful enough on its own to truly impact the overall success or failure of a movie. As of now, only the movie-going audience can do that. And guess what? They're not all on Twitter... well, at least not yet.

It is, of course, no secret that Google is having a very hard time monetizing YouTube. While it is one of Google's most successful acquisitions in terms of its userbase (more people now perform searches on YouTube than on Yahoo), it has at best been a loss leader for Google so far.

It is also interesting that YouTube would be trying to woo the film industry. After all, Google has had a rocky relationship with the movie industry for years and has been regularly sued because of film and TV clips its users shared on the service. However, having premium, licensed content on YouTube would allow Google to circumvent the potential copyright issues which have kept it from rolling out advertising on a wider scale so far.

One option for Google would also be to buy a blanket license from the studios that would give its users a safe harbor for sharing clips from these studies, while allowing Google to sell advertising against it.

Would You Watch Movies on YouTube?

It's also worth noting that most users only watch relatively short video clips online. So while there is a potential market for the film industry and Google here, it would seem that monetizing this content won't be easy on YouTube.

Affordable Film Distribution On Any Site, Any Social Network

MeDeploy is a new digital media distribution platform that just launched last week at DEMO. With this solution in place, any filmmaker, whether a big Hollywood studio or small indie artist, can get access to all the tools needed to manage and distribute their content to any web site, social network, or mobile device. The platform offers features like media transcoding, content management, media storage, delivery, anti-piracy tools, and secure credit card processing. Films can be sold as digital rentals, download-to-own videos, or video-on-demand sales.

Instead of offering pre-made templates or store-widgets, MeDeploy offers a white label solution for sales, marketing, and distribution on any web site anywhere on the web. It provides the necessary tools for doing so in the form of widgetized bits of code. These aren't just simple "blog widgets" functioning as ads, either. The site provides cut-and-paste code for several different types of functions from "add to cart" to "watch trailer" to something called a "balloon widget," which pops up additional info about a title when you hover your mouse over an item, like an image for example.

A Balloon Widget In Action:

The code samples can be pasted into any web site, blog, or social network, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Imeem, and other networks on the OpenSocial platform.

Why This Matters

Although some filmmakers may be technical, they shouldn't have to be advanced web developers in order to market their movies on their own sites or social network pages. (Of course, if they are technical, the developer API and documentation are available). By offering a white label solution, customers don't have to leave their current location in order to buy or view the films - the media can come to them instead, no matter which site or social network they're on at the time.

A Social Network Widget for Brain Damage Films

Who knows how many indie films are sitting out there unseen and unknown simply because the filmmakers can't afford to market them. Similar to how blogging CMS platforms leveled the playing field for online publishing, tools like this one from MeDeploy can do the same for filmmakers.

Pricing

Prior to MeDeploy, the only options for distributing paid video content like movie downloads were very expensive enterprise digital solutions that only large studios and TV networks could afford.

MeDeploy's Dashboard

Although MeDeploy was designed to help the indie filmmaker, that's not to say that it can't cater to the large studios, too. The company offers two pricing tiers: MeDeploy Indie ($19.95/mo) and MeDeploy Professional ($199.95/mo). With the Indie account, a filmmaker has everything needed to get started with online distribution. When their catalog and distribution needs change, they can then upgrade to Professional, which is a more customizable and scalable solution ideal for larger distributors, studios, and broadcast networks.

Any filmmakers out there who want to test the waters prior to signing up can get started with a free 30-day trial: just visit www.medeploy.com.

For more information, check out their presentation from DEMO, embedded below:

MySpace Music has been around since the site's inception in the late 90s, and has been one of the site's greatest success stories. In fact, MySpace has pointed to use by hollywood stars and musicians as a key reason for its success. So it is no wonder that Facebook wants to attract those users and attack its chief rival at its most dominant point. How has it done so far? A quick random sample of two recent movies and two popular music acts paints an interesting picture (the numbers stated are "friends" on MySpace profiles and "fans" on Facebook Pages):

Movie/Artist	MySpace	Facebook
Sweeney Todd	77,017	13,186
Cloverfield	4,471	21,732
DJ Shadow	126,737	3,011
Dave Matthews	316,504	84,952

What does that mean? It is far to early to declare either site the winner, but clearly MySpace generally has a commanding lead on Facebook, especially when it comes to music. Even looking at the experience of a friend of mine who is an independent musical artist, his success on MySpace is far greater than that on Facebook (he doesn't have a Facebook Page yet, but does have an account on Facebook, and has 469 friends there vs. nearly 12,000 on MySpace).

But the numbers also show that people on Facebook are interested in hooking up with their favorite bands and movies. And while MySpace offers a lot more in the way of visual customization -- something artists might be keen on -- Facebook has some distinct advantages. For example, their music player allows an unlimited number of tracks, as opposed to just six, and they can be linked to a purchase location. Further, Facebook has a mature platform where developers can create useful applications that artists and filmmakers can use to enhance their pages, as opposed to MySpace's love-hate relationship with widget makers and a still unlaunched developer platform. From a technology and artist utility standpoint, it's conceivable that Facebook could catch up to MySpace on music very quickly, if it hasn't already.

Aside from its already massive installed base of artists and fans, MySpace does still have one huge advantage over Facebook, customization. The very thing that is perhaps the key most noticeable difference between the two networks, the ability for people to customize their home pages, is also one of the key reasons why music and film work better on MySpace than on Facebook -- because it allows artists to spread their work virally. Until Facebook bakes in the ability for people to more fluidly embed media on their profiles (the Share option just isn't as obvious and powerful as MySpace's built in music player), we're skeptical that it can compete with MySpace for fan attention in these areas. Unfortunately for Facebook, that's a change that would likely meet a lot of resistance from its users.

What do you think of Facebook's new Music and Film Pages? Are they enough to take on MySpace? Would you rather Facebook leave Hollywood out of the picture all together and focus specifically on its regular users? Let us know in the comments.